Category: The Writing Life

You ever notice that the problem with year-end wrap-ups is that years don’t actually wrap-up?  I mean, for bookkeeping purposes, it’s fine to pretend that the year has a beginning, a middle, and an end, all of which can be tidied away into that box over there, while from the box over here, the pristine first month folder is removed and opened.

In fact, our first month calendar already has things in it that were put in motion by events that took place in the year being “wrapped-up.”

On January 1, around noon, we’ll entertain the Catastrophe Team, who will look at the places where the downed trees had been. (Oh!  The broken trees have been removed.  The big spruce was something of a challenge, but the arborist was able to remove it without inciting the root ball into a frenzy that would have done all the damage to the house that it missed doing when it came down.  So, that’s all good news.)  We also have several doctor’s appointments, directly related to Steve’s medical adventure in late November, and another appointment with the arborist, to take down the other big spruce that’s too close to the house, and which was seen dancing on its roots during the windstorm.

On the writing side of life, Steve and I are wrapping up the year-long celebration of the publication of Salvage Right, the 25th Liaden novel, coincidentally our 100th collaboration.  Which isn’t too bad for a universe that was several times declared dead, and we thank everyone who participated.  The ripples continue into next year, with Ribbon Dance (the 104th Lee-and-Miller collaboration, 26th novel set in the Liaden Universe®) scheduled for a June release.  Steve is currently working on short story “Familiarity,” which was commissioned last year, and I’m working on the 27th Liaden novel (which has a name, but it’s a Sekrit), which was contracted for in 2022, and is due in September 2024.

This year was not a good one, cashflow-wise.  Publishing in general is in one of its Moods; the way books are dealt into bookstores has been readjusted to, as far as I can see, no one’s benefit, which personally meant diminished royalties in a year of increased expense (because that’s always the way it works), combined with other things both disappointing, but I suppose inevitable, with roots almost a decade deep.

Steve and I are planning to publish some new chapbooks next year, in order to increase cashflow.  In Olden Times, I would have been looking for a part-time job to fill in the gaps, but I think that ship has sailed.  (No, please — no one suggest that I hang out my shingle as an editor.  I’m a lousy editor.)

Regarding travel . . . we will not (NOT) be attending Boskone — that’s the ripples from Steve’s health adventure reaching out into February.  We had talked about going to World Fantasy, but that really depends on cashflow.  Watch this space for updates.

For the rest of it — Larger Real Life is too damn’ scary even to try to talk about — ref years not wrapping up, but ringing their changes far out into the future. . .  I’m trying to walk the fine line between being informed, and being able to function as a decent human being within my own very small sphere of influence.

. . . and that’s the year-end wrap-up from the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.  Our wish to you in the new year is health, comfort, and peace.

See you next year.

Sharon, Steve, Trooper, Sprite, and Firefly

 

When last we saw our Hmbl Narrator, she was getting ready to reopen Rolanni’s Taxi as a result of Steve’s ICD firing, and the attached Rule that, once that happens, the firee may not drive for six months.

Doctor appointments proliferated from the above event, as you might expect, new meds were prescribed, and ourselves Warned to Watch for Side Effects, the most common being “light-headedness.” (Sure, and it’s a marvelous thing to get old, that place from which All the Health Workers are yelling in both ears, “DON’T FALL!” at the same time they’re prescribing drugs the most common side effect of same is light-headedness.  Yes, yes.  Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?)

So, anyway…absent the above appointments, we had a lovely chat with Craig at Legendarium podcast about Janet Kagan’s Hellspark, celebrated Trooper’s 14th birthday, and settled back into writing — we’re writers, after all.

We pause here to review History.  Back in, eh?  May?  I made arrangements with Andersen Windows to replace the windows in her office.  For those coming in late, my office is a former sun room, with three sets of casement windows and two enormous custom clerestory windows.  Because of how Supply and Demand work anymore, Andersen did not actually have windows to replace the old, cracked, cloudy, and leaky windows until — now.

Or, rather, December 19, 20, 21, and 22.  That was the schedule, and I spent the weekend of December 16 and 17 tearing my office apart so that Work Could Go Forth.

On the night of Sunday, December 17, it began to rain.  We were forewarned, some of us noting that usually by now, the projected storm would be snow, not rain, but tending to think that the warm air the storm was riding north was a mitzvah.

Boy, were we wrong.

Eight inches of rain fell in 24 hours, with winds exceeding 60 mph here in our little protected valley.  Around 11 am on Monday, we lost power, and the generator kicked in.  And stayed kicked in for the next 22 hours.

Steve had two appointments at the local hospital for Monday, bot cancelled, as the hospital lost power to all non-critical areas (aka, the labs).  Early on, we lost a branch that looks to weigh roughly as much as I do out of the Really Big Pine Tree down back.  Also, one of our neighbors trees fell across the fence.  The wind drove rain unrelentingly into the back wall of the house, and water poured through my office windows.

Along mid-afternoon, I heard a crack, and Steve yelled from his office, across the width of the house — “We lost the apple tree!”  — and looking out the window, I could see the apple tree had split down the middle, one half leaning on the deck; the other tangled up in the roof.

Through all this, the wind roared, and the generator growled, but we were dry (saving the office window, streaming with rain), and warm, and the lights were on.

About half an hour after the apple tree came down, Steve called me into the bedroom.  The 60-foot spruce that had been beside our house was beside our house no longer; it had fallen across our neighbor’s driveway missing his car by a literal two inches, and blocking his access to the road.  Neither one of us had heard that tree go.

We were by this time in the eye of the storm.  Steve went over to talk to our neighbor; I went out back to retrieve the piece of our deck that had been loosed by the falling apple tree, and that the wind had tossed into the yard at the base of the stairs.

The piece I was trying to retrieve was a step away from the walkway.  I stepped forward — and sank above my ankle in mud.  I pulled back, leaving my shoe in the mud.  Eventually, I rescued both shoe and deck piece, but wasn’t that a shock?  The ground’s supposed to be frozen in December!

As this was going on, Steve was talking to the neighbor, who said that he had looked out the second story window, saw that the tree was leaning, and thought, “Gee, I don’t remember that tree having quite that much of an angle.”  By the time he had that thought, and went downstairs to the kitchen, the tree was down, so gently no one heard it hit.

Lack of damage to the car being ascertained, our neighbor got out his chainsaw and cut the tree out of his driveway.

And right around then, the rain started again.

The storm finally blew itself out, around midnight.

Tuesday dawned sunny and warm (remember that warm air cushion the storm rode up?  It stuck around for about 24 hours).

Around 7 am, Andersen called to make sure that we had power, so that the window crew could do their work.  We agreed that we had power, because we had a generator, still growling, though the rest of the neighborhood was still in the dark.  The window crew was dispatched, arrived, and began to do their thing.

The cats, Steve, and I retired to his office, and I began calling the insurance company.

The grid power came back on around 11 am, about the same time that the foreman asked me step outside so he could show me something.

The “something” was wood so wet that he could reach down behind the siding of the house and pull out rotting handfuls.  Above the place where windows had been (the removal of the windows having brought this situation to light), if you pressed on the wood, water sheeted down.

“I can’t put windows in that,” the foreman told me; “they’ll crack, right off.”

“Can you fix the rot problem?” was my question.  He assured me that they could, yes, ma’am, only he had to call a boss to get an OK.

I went back inside, told Steve what the problem was, and called the insurance company again.  This time they answered, and Amanda helped me open two claims — one for the wind damage and the other for the rotten wall.  I got claim numbers and an assignment to the Catastrophe Team (yes, I’m going to swank about that for a long time).

Eventually, the boss’s OK came through, with an additional number of $$s attached to the job total, which was already, um, hefty, but at least we’d budgeted for it.

Wednesday, we managed to get Steve to the hospital for a Pulmonary Function Panel, one of the two tests that had been canceled on Monday due to lack of power.  The second, an xray will wait until after the holiday.

After the hospital, we stopped at the local grocery, the shelves of which were pretty much bare, between lack of deliveries (lots of roads still under water, and bridges closed even on Wednesday), spoilage, and accelerated shopping.  They did, however, have fresh milk, eggs, bread, and wine, which was pretty much what we’d come for.  As we were standing in line to check out — the power went out.

People yelled.  The emergency dims came on, and about two minutes later, the grid lights (and the computers) came on.  We checked out and came home.

The window crew worked like a well-oiled machine, swapping out the rotted wood for new, replacing the insulation and getting the new windows finished.

The Catastrophe Team called, and made an appointment for New Years Day at noon for an in-person, onsite assessment.  We were given leave to have “things cleaned up” aka get the downed trees taken away, but were instructed to save receipts.

I called our Tree Guy, leaving a message explaining we had a three-tree problem (two downed trees and one that has to come down, because if it falls, it will not only land in the driveway across the street, but will take the wires down for a mile before it makes landfall).  No answer as yet, of course, because someone was sloppy enough to have plunked an Enormous Traveling Holiday smack dab in the middle of our Southern Catastrophe.

Which is to say that everything clean-up-wise is on hold at least until next Tuesday.

In the meantime, there are still people in Maine who are without power, going on five days now.  We were extremely fortunate, all around. As Steve and I keep saying to each other, “Luck of the clan.”

And that warm wind?  If it had been a typical December, the ground would have been frozen.  The wind would have undoubtedly knocked down trees, limbs, and wire, but whole trees would not have simply . . . uprooted, as happened to the tree that fell across our neighbor’s drive.

Temps have cooled off to more seasonal now — into the 30sF — and the mud is frozen.  The rivers have receded somewhat, but there are still places that are largely under water.  Federal Disaster Aid has been requested, but it’s going to be a Long Fix for Maine.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the cats’ part in all of this.  We of course had to keep them “confined” during the window replacement.

The first morning, I went around the house, gathering up cats and tossing them into the hallway into “Steve’s Wing” of the house.  Even though we were all in the same space, they acted like they were trapped, and kept trying to orchestrate a jailbreak — at least until they got tired and found comfy places to nap.

The second morning, the gathering up was more difficult, because the cats were Wise to Me, but I got the thing done in time.

The third morning, I went looking for cats, and found none, because — they were already in Steve’s office, and well into the first nap shift of the day.

So, that’s the Newest Installment of the Thrilling Adventures here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.

Be aware that I am going to post donation links to the very bottom of this correspondence.  I’d been doing a play-by-play on Facebook, and people began to write to me, asking how they could “help.”  Help is very much appreciated; it is not mandated — actually, just being able to type this all out in one place is a help in itself — but if you wish to send money, the links are available.

And before we go, here are the windows Before and After.

 

Oh, and, hey — here’s a picture of that downed tree, and the other tree, still standing, that will have to be taken down:

Ways to help:
Buy me a Ko-Fi
PayPal
Patreon
Check:  US funds only, to:
Sharon Lee and/or Steve Miller
PO Box 1586
Waterville ME 04903-1586

YOU GOTTA HAVE HEART … is the way I hear it.

Long post about a strange day in several directions.

By about 9:15 AM this morning I’d already decided that today deserved a post … and then more stuff happened. And didn’t happen, too.

To begin with I had a scheduled echo cardiogram to get to by 9:00 and I enlisted Sharon to drive me since I was running a bit off schedule — after all if were were late she could drop me off at the door and then catch up.

On the short way to the cardio office we saw not 1 but 2 trucks run different Waterville traffic lights — 1 was a trailerless road-tractor, going right where I/we’d have been in the first big intersection on our way if Sharon hadn’t been paying attention, and the next a Big Bad Black I Stops For Nuthin pick-up at the intersection leading to the hospital/medical compound. Might have been enough to write about, right there, eh?

We made it in good enough time, nonetheless, and were settled into the sonographer’s waiting room when one of of the therapy nurses from my “old” post cardio-implant cardiac specialty gym stopped by on business with the sonographer’s office — and we had a great short discussions about how we’d all been and how she’d seen the article a few weeks back, and that we both were looking good … so — an “old home week” moment!

Still waiting and … another nurse from my old specialty gym ( few doors down the hall) came in, said hello, and Sharon noticed that this nurse … was carrying a book she wanted autographed. She’d had it in her drawer for a couple years, missing me on the several occasions when I’d stopped in to see the old gang… and hah, there we were signing a Lee & Miller book and chatting away old times when I got called … and so, cool, eh? Not a bad morning … I figured I’d mention it ….

And then my heart got sounded out for almost an hour (this is a boring procedure even if there are some Voyage to the Bottom of the Seas sound moments), and as I prepped to leave … the receptionist stopped me, handing me a green sticky note, telling me she’d JUST NOW had a phone call for me from Bangor, and that I’d better call them back RIGHT NOW.

Not being in the habit of getting phone calls from Bangor while in a doctor’s office in Waterville I called the number immediately … and got the news that over the weekend my ICD-implant had auto-called the hospital system’s “device office” to report an anomalous ICD event … and the device specialist said her reading of the time-stamped report meant I ought JIC probably stop in to the ER before I went home… and that she was calling my cardiologist and the ER, too, to let them know I’d be on the way as soon as I told her that I was, in fact, going to do that. She’d called that office because the hospital portal had told her I was already supposed to be on the grounds ….

Well heck, with the ER being a convenient three hundred foot downhill drift away we ended up with-in moments at ER, where the magic words “cardiac patient name name name device-office name, event trigger, BANGOR CALLED” got me through the ER triage line pretty quick.

Ummm, hey, so there’s the hospital’s electronic portal system working better than I knew, and that’s worth writing about, yes?

Also, we’d both had our tablets with us, so we had reading. Reading is good, right? Especially if you don’t know if you’re getting a room in Waterville or an ambulance ride to Bangor, another round of tests, or what. By way of entertainment, maintenance came and shifted us from side to side in the room and out into the hall at one point in order to fix the overhead light fixture that wasn’t working right ….

Settling things out — apparently my ICD implant functioned Sunday morning despite the fact that I didn’t notice it. I’m told that it is hard not to notice the thing being triggered, but nope, I apparently slept through it. In fact I’d walked extra steps Saturday *and* Sunday because I’d been feeling pretty good.

Over a few hours the ER folks gave me a room, gave me multiple blood tests, and an EKG too, talked to the cardiologist that read today’s fresh heart movies, talked to my local cardio office, got me chest-x-rayed, had me on continuous monitor for about 5 hours. and when we despaired of ever having a meal again managed to get us “lunch” just as the attending late afternoon ER physician was saying “How does going home sound?”

Right: the blood tests are good (no tell tales of a heart attack or any related problems), my imaging from today shows a heart pretty much looking the way it did a few years ago, there’s no problem shown by multiple chest x-rays…

So, I came home to finish the half of lunch I still had — so I could take my lunch meds! –and now I have lists of who else to call tomorrow — I’ll still see my early consultation about the hernia — and I’m told that for tonight, at least, I can return to my regularly scheduled program. I expect to be seeing my PCP and cardiologist RSN, but they were in the works already, and tomorrow ought tell the tale in part about the hernia situation.

Oh, and that’s how I spent my day, and Sharon’s too. Sharon was amazingly patient.

Hope your day wasn’t quite like ours.

After breakfast, we got on to the fun part of the day.

We had decided to visit the Maine Mineral Museum in Bethel, Maine on the recommendation of Steve’s brother, who did not steer us wrong.

The museum’s webpage urges you to plan for 90 minutes to tour the facility.

We took more than twice as long.

Allow me to explain.

My very first Museum Happy Place was the Hall of Minerals in the Smithsonian in Washington DC.  Since I grew up in Baltimore, DC was an easy day-trip, even back in Olden Times, and — this was key — there is No Charge to tour the Smithsonian Institutions.  Any of them.

So, it’s fair to say that I’d been all over the Smithsonian when I was a kid, and a lot of the Halls were interesting; some were even worth revisiting.  But the Hall of Minerals was MINE. Honestly, if it was up to me, I’d’ve moved in and be living there still.

Happily, it wasn’t up to me, and I had a far different, and, probably, far more exciting life because of it.

We decided to approach Bethel from Route 2, which was a nice ride through the autumnal countryside.  We arrived at the museum just after 11, got ourselves checked in, and started the tour.

Maine has a rich history of gems and minerals, and the museum has many accessible, clearly labeled, and just plain fascinating exhibits.  Steve and I were taking our time even before we met a gentleman in the Hall of Gems and Jewelry, who engaged us in a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion of the museum, and (some of) its holdings.  We arranged to meet later in the Space Rocks room, and he went off to do some work, while we continued our tour.

Even if you don’t like gems and minerals (which, I’m finding this hard to imagine, understand, but — the Goddess made us all different so we could support each other), you must see the Space Rocks.

We had the advantage of meeting our friend of the gem room — who turned out to be Larry Stifler, one of the founders of the museum — who got Patrick Leverone, the meteor specialist, involved, and we learned about the camera arrays tracking meteors across the Maine skies, and the fact that every meteor found and analyzed adds to our understanding, resonating backward to the Big Bang.

We learned that the museum has just received a Federal grant, that will enable it to buy the equipment to date their own finds.

Also, we learned that the asteroid that hit upcountry earlier this year, and which the museum put a bounty on, is still unfound.  The museum is training teams, who will soon be traveling to the 1 mile by 11/12 mile swath identified as the landing zone, and there is some optimism that this rock will be found.

We did get to hold a piece of the moon, which was beyond awesome, and we probably could have stayed even longer — we barely scratched the Discovery Gallery — but Adulting won out, and we (reluctantly) left to find lunch.

In case it was in doubt — yes, we’re planning on going back.  For one thing, we got so involved inside, that we didn’t manage to tour the Rock Garden at the front of the museum.

If you’re ever in Bethel — heck, if you’re ever within driving distance of Bethel — make sure you visit this place.  And, really, 90 minutes isn’t nearly long enough.

 

 

So, yesterday, Steve and I declared a Writers’ Day Off.  We had in our eye the Maine Mineral Museum in Bethel, about which more in the next post.

Prior to hitting the road for Bethel, we hit Governor’s in Waterville for breakfast.  We were seated in a booth in the main dining room, and placed our orders.  Sometime after that, a man was conducted to the booth behind us.  He had a . . . large . . . voice, and told the waitress that he was waiting for a friend.

I think our breakfast arrived before the friend did, but when she did arrive, the big voice came into play, so loud that, honestly, Steve and I couldn’t hold our own conversation, so we did what writers do and listened to theirs.

Bad mistake.

It started out normally enough, with the Big Voice wanting to know what motivated her to bike miles a day, and swim.  Her voice was much softer, but I understood her to say that her parents had left untimely and she wanted to take better care of herself than they had been able to do.

This triggered some reminisces of his own childhood from Big Voice, including the information that his parents, who had moved to Maine from Massachusetts — I want to say Danvers? — were shoe shop workers.  When they had arrived, they got the government cheese, and started a garden, and worked hard to make sure they could feed the family.  Big Voice said that, being a kid, he’d hated weeding the garden, but it became link between himself and his parents, and now he maintains a garden of his own, and his kids take part.

All very usual, and civilized.

Well, it comes about that the soft-voice friend was looking to run for office in Maine, and was seeking Big Voice’s advice. Which is when things got horrifying.

Because it was quickly revealed that she was running as a Republican, and that Big Voice had been, or perhaps still was, a practicing Republican in the Maine Legislature.

I’m not going to repeat the whole conversation — for one thing, my memory’s not that good.  But I will offer choice phrases from the conversation.

“The Lord made us all different for a reason,” Big Voice said at one point, which is actually hopeful — because this sounds like someone who understands diversity and tolerance for differences.

Only, later on, in the course of explaining how easy it was to vote — “If it raises taxes, it’s a NO.  How hard is that?” — that he admitted that the NARCAN vote was difficult for him — again, a hopeful comment, indicating that this guy has a conscience.  But then he says, more or less, On the one hand these people have done it to themselves.  But on the other hand, you don’t know what they’d do with the rest of their lives.

Apparently, we don’t have to consider, when deciding if someone should die, what they may done with their lives previously.

I also learned that the wake-up call for “them” was COVID, when “they” realized that Mills (Janet Mills is our governor) and her government had incredible power over their lives.

Myself, I shudder to think what Maine would have looked like if Paul LePage (defeated by Mills) had been governor during the start of the pandemic.

Also, I learned that “Democrats are violating the natural laws.”  Which was alarming, though gravity did still seem to be working from where I sat.

ANYway, we finished our meal, paid the waitress, Steve went out the back door to hit the necessary, and I got up and stepped over to the booth behind.

“I couldn’t help but overhear you,” I told them.  “And I wonder who you are?”

Big Voice told me that he was Joel Stetkis, the Maine GOP Chair.  The woman gave me a friendly smile, told me her name, and it is totally on me that I forgot it.  My plan had been to ask her if she was planning to run for office as a Republican, and if she said yes to ask WHY?  But then I remembered that I was having a day off to relax, and I had already heard enough scary, terrifying stuff, so I gave them my card and left.

If you want to read about the fun part of the day, that’s the next post.

So, yesterday, we went to Jasper Beach, in Machiasport, Maine.

To get there, you drive toward Machias, Maine, eventually taking a right onto Kennebec Road, a left on Port Road, and stop when you see the ocean.  There’s a sand and gravel parking lot to the left off the Port Road.

In order to reach the beach, you need to follow a narrow trail overgrown with sea roses, then scale a rock dune — by which I mean a dune that is made of round rocks and stones, instead of sand.

Once you reach the top of the dune, the Atlantic Ocean lies ahead of you.  Between you and the ocean are more round rocks and stones.  It’s a little perilous for those of us who have grown unsteady in our knees and on our feet to navigate.  I did go down toward the water, and stopped when I realized how difficult is was going to be to get back up the slope.

So, I stood there, watching the ocean, assaulted by a brisk salt breeze, and marveled anew at the quantity of islands Maine manages to pack into its various inlets and bays, and the endless variability of The Rugged Maine Coast™.

I took a couple pictures with my phone, but Steve had the Big Camera.  The shots below are his.

After we had Communed sufficiently, we drove up to Machais, where we lunched at Helen’s — Steve had the crabcake sandwich, and I had the meatloaf-and-grilled-cheese on garlic bread, which is pretty far out of my wheelhouse — and it was delicious.  We bought slices of Helen’s Just Famous pie to bring home with us — lemon meringue for Steve; blueberry for me — which became this morning’s breakfast.

It was, in all, an interesting and enjoyable day off — about 350 miles of driving through autumnal Maine.

Here’s what Jasper Beach looks like (photos by Steve Miller):

 

 

Today, we celebrate the 1988 arrival in Maine of one (1) black Chevrolet Beretta driven by myself, orange-and-white Archie McGee, and tabbycat Brandee riding shotgun; and one (1) UHaul rent-a-van packed with what was left of our Worldly Goods, driven by Steve, with Arwen as his copilot.

We made Skowhegan in the afternoon, first stop at the address of the guy who had rented us a house, long-distance, there to find out that his daughter had left her husband during the three days it had taken us to drive up from Maryland, and instead of a place to unload, we got our money back. We then went to the offices of the Skowhegan Reporter to let Steve’s boss (who had hired him likewise long-distance) know he was in town. Boss had been reassigned, and no, Steve didn’t have a job.

We finally made landing at Maitland Richardson’s Skowhegan campground. The managers there, despite they were shutting down for the winter, kindly rented us a cabin and swore that they would tell staff to winterize it last. That done, we deposited the cats in the cabin, rented a storage unit, unpacked the UHaul, went to Shop and Save to pick up salads and the large bottle of wine, returned to the cabin and collapsed.

Today’s celebrations will include, we hope, receiving the new Covid booster, followed by ice cream, followed by viewing Asteroid City from the comfort of our living room, possibly with the company of three Maine coon cats.